Alachua County will analyze map options on Tuesday for dividing the county commission districts, but the Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) will have to decide on a map at that meeting in order to implement the change for the 2026 elections.
The county commissioners brought up the issue this week during comments at the end of a special meeting. The BOCC asked staff to bring forward two of the 11 map options submitted by citizens, along with the current map boundaries. But the commissioners said they didn’t want to review any of the three map options drawn by their own consultant over the summer.
“No, none of those work,” Commissioner Ken Cornell said.
“No, I agree. I was not a fan of those,” Commissioner Anna Prizzia replied.
The county started redistricting work earlier this year, but after postponing the item in August, the BOCC is on a tight, one-week deadline in order to implement the changes for the 2026 election.
County staff said Florida law would require the new map to be finalized by Nov. 20, and the county would need to advertise the change—which is now done only through its website and social media—before bringing it back at the first meeting in November for a vote.
Alachua County attorney Sylvia Torres said staff reviewed the maps only to ensure the population distributions met legal requirements. She said staff has not evaluated the maps for other parameters. Other parameters often include competitiveness, proportionality and minority representation.
Commissioner Mary Alford said now is a good time to change the districts, with two commissioners considering retirement. Only Commissioner Marihelen Wheeler has announced she would not run for reelection.
Alachua County staff started reviewing current district boundaries in the spring after urging by the BOCC. Cornell and Prizzia both said that it was an important issue to solve before the 2026 election.
Cornell said he wanted Alachua County to have the best possible districts regardless of how the ongoing litigation, which will decide if commissioners are elected through single-member districts or at-large districts, is settled. He said the best maps might deviate from the traditional template the county has used for decades—a five-slice pie shape with Gainesville in the center.
Perhaps the largest issue to solve, commissioners said, would be split precincts. Alachua County is divided into 63 precincts, and 16 are currently split. These precincts happen where residents vote at the same location but have different ballots with different candidates on the ballots. Commissioners said the split precincts caused issues in the November 2024 election.
In May, the BOCC voted to hire an outside consultant to do the work, with directions to provide “examples of different geographies, including districts that include a greater breadth of county geography for each district.”
The consultant returned three map options that were slated for discussion at a county meeting in August. But before that happened, Cornell voiced issues with the maps, mostly how it would impact the incumbents and where they live.
You can read Mainstreet’s full breakdown of those maps here.
Cornell requested that staff ask the consultant, Dan Smith, a UF professor of political science and president of Election Smith Inc., about his concerns before the topic came up at the planned meeting.
However, county Spokesperson Mark Sexton informed Mainstreet that the item had been pulled from the August meeting to allow more time to digest the information. He said if the commissioners would like, they could ask for it to come back at a later date.
A couple of weeks later, the county asked the public to submit their own redrawn district maps. The county received and gave 11 submissions to the BOCC in a packet at the Oct. 7 meeting, and Cornell asked for options four and eight to be discussed alongside the current district map.
The two citizen maps both break from the historic pie-shaped mold and include districts centered on just Gainesville, along with larger rural districts. The options would also prevent incumbents from campaigning against each other in future elections.
Both map options reduce the split precinct problem. Option four keeps three split precincts, and option eight keeps two split precincts.
Alternatively, each of Smith’s three options eliminated all split precincts and included Gainesville-centered districts. He told Mainstreet that all three of the maps perform better than the current district layout in terms of competitiveness, proportionality and minority representation.
Besides the district maps, the BOCC will also discuss its state and federal legislative priorities, a facilities management master space plan and a performance evaluation for top staff.